


At The Start

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Moving In Together, One Shot, Sentimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 17:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12869775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Craig and Tweek are young, in love, and not at all prepared for the rest of their lives. The first Walmart trip that inevitably comes on move-in day is only the start.Rated T for language. Creek. Domestic AU. One-Shot.





	At The Start

**Author's Note:**

> This was written at the prompting of a friend a little while ago! I forgot to post it to AO3 so I'm doing that now. Please enjoy if you haven't read it yet (I posted it to my tumblr blame-canada, feel free to chat or follow or whatever too)!

“Okay, you got the list?” Tweek bit at his thumb, pausing a moment to let the automatic doors sense his weight and part for him to enter. 

Craig didn’t look away from his phone, but he tilted it up to gesture with it. “Got the list.” He clicked out of the random email he was clearing from his inbox and switched over to the note he and Tweek had carefully written out a few hours before. A rush of air conditioning assaulted his face, and when he looked up he caught an eyeful of fluorescent, painfully unnatural lights.

They’d forgotten more than a couple essentials before they moved into their new apartment.

In their defense, neither of them had done it before. The closest Craig had ever gotten was a dorm room in college, and Tweek had only ever commuted to school. ‘New’ was a very nice way to put it too- it was, in all honesty, a sad excuse for a home, but their budget was low enough that they couldn’t quite afford to be picky. At least this one didn’t have water stains all over the ceiling or a busted up window, and Tweek didn’t feel like the protagonist of a horror movie when he walked through the neighborhood to test the waters.

Who even thought of a shower curtain when they moved out? Nobody, Craig was convinced.

He scrolled through the list quickly, scanning for which sections of the store they had to visit (most of them) before he clicked his phone off and smiled, shaking his head to himself. “It’s a shame,” he said, an open invitation, and Tweek took the bait, looking over his shoulder at him while he dislodged a shopping cart from the messy chain shoved up against the wall.

“Uh, w-what is?”

Craig’s smirk grew even wider, and he said, “That you thought this was going to be a productive shopping trip.”

With that, he hip-checked Tweek away from the cart, hijacked control of the rickety contraption, and surged forward with his hands firmly planted at the ends of the handlebar. Tweek made a strangled noise of distress but Craig had already started to pick up speed, letting his strides match the growing momentum of the cart as it barreled forward into the throes of the store.

“Craig you god dam — Craig, w-what the fu — what are you doing?” Tweek asked, stumbling around swear words so clumsily he may as well have shouted them anyway. He had to hop a little faster than Craig to keep up, and his face was turning cherry red from a combination of nerves, embarrassment, and sudden physical strain.

Craig tried his hardest to keep his straightest face when he replied, “Shopping.”

“You - !  _ You asshole,” _ Tweek hissed, reaching to grab him by the arm and hook himself onto it, dragging alongside him to get the cart to slow down. “Quit it!”

“Okay,” Craig said with a shrug, and he dramatically lifted both hands from the cart to let it fly forward unmanned. Tweek gasped and jumped ahead to grab it before it careened right into a kiosk full of cheap jewelry nobody ever bought.

Tweek paused, his back to Craig, and for one fleeting moment Craig felt rather certain he was going to die. Tweek looked over his shoulder, and scathed,  _ “Behave.” _

“Nah,” Craig replied, and he pointed northwest. “The shower curtains are probably down here.” Tweek grumbled irritated nonsense to himself, but Craig saw the smile he was desperately trying to hide. That meant he wasn’t completely in the dog house yet, which boded well.

Walking through the store with Tweek had a strange feeling attached to it that he couldn’t quite define. They’d gone on trips before, of course, to grab snacks or run an errand for their parents here and there, but it felt different with a brand new key resting in his right pocket. It was a key to a place where Tweek would be beside him  _ every day, _ and the thought made him so anxious and so excited that the only way that made sense to release that energy at the time was to annoy the fuck out of his boyfriend at Walmart.

“Clear or white?” Tweek asked, effectively slamming the brakes on his daydreaming, and he looked over to see him holding up two nearly identical packages.

“I mean, I don’t mind a show, but if we ever have guests I dunno how they’ll feel about the clear.” Tweek turned red and Craig internally pat himself on the back while he shrugged. Nice.

“This is the  _ liner, _ Craig, not the actual curtain. No one’s gonna see this part!”

“Oh,” he said. “Who cares, then..?”

Tweek rolled his eyes and tossed the clear one into their cart, replacing the other on its hook. “You’re killing me,” he moaned, stomping his feet a little in a tantrum.

“You love it,” Craig replied, and when Tweek huffed, he accepted it as a victory.

“Can we do food next?” Tweek asked, and when he shrugged in agreement, he smiled and took hold of the end of the cart, steering it toward the food aisles. Sometimes, watching Tweek do nothing at all made Craig feel a certain kind of weird. It was the kind of feeling that made him smile involuntarily, and his hand itch with the desire to take his. He guessed it was love, probably, but like, a lot more of it all at once. It was kind of great. Watching Tweek pull the cart, his back to him, his hair swirled more erratically than most days, Craig felt an awful lot of that feeling. Maybe one day, after living together for a little while, he’d feel more comfortable talking about and expressing it. For now, though, it came out in bouts of ruthless teasing.

“Hey Craig,” Tweek snorted, giggling quietly, “Craig, h-hey — ”

“What?”

“Do you think I’d fit in this?” His finger trembled from contained laughter as it pointed to the bottom shelf of a display of what appeared to be dog beds.

“Hmm” — he clicked his tongue —“ not without difficulty. You’ll have to take into account the height of the shelf.”

Tweek raised his fist to his mouth, rubbing his knuckles under his nose while he thought. “Yeah, but also the bed will get smaller when I lay on it, assuming it’s as fluffy as it looks. Bet you two thingies of ice cream I can make it work.”

Craig raised his brows, the wager proving steep, but he was feeling confident that it would at least be endlessly amusing to watch him try to shove himself into a shelf. “Deal.”

Tweek rubbed his hands together and paused to let out a few more cackles. Craig looked around quickly, suddenly very aware of where they were because it was different when  _ he _ was misbehaving. “Come on, go,” he urged, and Tweek rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be so nervous, I’ve seen worse. Actually, remember that video where those guys made like, a-a whole apartment in the toilet paper aisle or something? Man, I’ve always wanted to do that — ”

Craig raised his hand, cutting him off. “While your enthusiasm is admirable, we do still have shit to do at the apartment. We resolve the bet, and then we get groceries.”

Tweek whined at him and scowled. “You got to be a little shit earlier,” he grumbled, and he got on his knees to crawl into the shelf. He pressed down on the bed, testing its resistance, and when it gave way easily and created a lot more space between the bed and the next shelf, he looked back at Craig with his eyebrows raised and a shit-eating grin. “I’m making you buy flavors you don’t like,” he said, snickering, and Craig crossed his arms.

“Just do it, Jesus Christ,” he muttered, now nervous about his chances of winning, and Tweek shrugged his shoulders and got into a crawling position.

“Should I like, match the shape and then try to slide in? Tetris it? I think that might work.”

“We’re in a bet. I’m not helping.”

“What if I get s-stuck!”

“Then you lose the bet and I leave here with two extra thingies of ice cream.” Tweek made an ugly snarling sound of irritation, and Craig did his best to contain laughter, though his shoulders still shook a few times. Tweek aligned himself with the bed, put both his left limbs out, and started pushing himself inside.

“I’m gonna do it. Dude, this is the easiest bet I’ve ever won,” Tweek said, and he wiggled around on his stomach to get himself deeper into the shelf and onto the dog bed. His head disappeared, then his shoulder, then his arm, and it wasn’t until he was completely hidden from view that he said, “Yes!” and cheered through the muffling caused by the fluff.

Craig took a moment to stare, note how well Tweek was hiding in the fluffy dog bed abyss, and check their list before he cleared his throat and announced, just loud enough for Tweek’s compromised ears to hear, “Goodbye, Tweek.”

He heard a distorted voice shriek, “What?!” The dog beds started to move and Craig ran around the end of the cart to grab the handle and dash away, looking over his shoulder and watching Tweek’s limbs thrash out from the shelf like some sort of eldritch horror beast. Craig stopped at the end of the aisle just so he could watch him struggle, no longer attempting to hold in his laughter, and Tweek’s flailing limbs slowly eased out of the shelf. He could only guess what sort of expletives he was spewing as he fought to escape from his own prison. As soon as his head was free, he yelled, “Craig!” and Craig ducked around the corner of the aisle, a rush of silly fear striking his chest like a cheap thrill. When he straightened his cart a mom with a drooling baby in the front basket glared at him, and he gave his best mild-mannered smile. Then his boyfriend whipped around the corner.

He was breathing unusually heavily, his hair staticky and reaching impressively well for the ceiling, and his clothes wildly askew. “What the  _ fuck, _ Craig,” he said, and when the mother shot him an even nastier glare, he rolled his eyes, and said, “Calm down, it’s too young to understand human speech anyway.” She let out a disturbed gasp and hurried away from the aisle, clearly angry. Craig felt very in love with him after that. As soon as she was far enough away and the aisle was empty, Tweek punched Craig’s arm. “You left me there to fend for myself. I coulda been stuck!”

“Yeah, but you weren’t.” Craig bit back the grin he was desperately trying to contain, but it wasn’t working, and he finally just let himself chuckle as he brushed Tweek’s hair down and straightened his shirt.

Tweek swatted at his invasive arms. “You don’t have to groom me, Jesus Christ,” but he smiled anyway, and he didn’t object when Craig slipped a hand down to clasp his at their sides.

“What flavors do you want? I’m a man of my word,” Craig said, and Tweek thought about it, scratching at his chin while he held some thrilling debate in his mind.

“Wanna just get the usual?” he suggested, his smile earnest.

“Didn’t you want to get flavors I don’t like?”

“You like pretty much anything,” Tweek admitted, “a-and I’m feeling particularly generous.”

“Well then.” Craig released his hold on the shopping cart and Tweek’s hand to clap his hands together, and said, “One Cherry Garcia and one Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch it is.”

With the promise of ice cream to load into their new and empty freezer, they rolled to the grocery section of the store with enthusiasm and excitement buzzing on their nerves, because they were finally moving in together, and life was good. After a few more chases down aisles and giggle fits to earn the glares of several old people, they paid an unfortunately steep price at the register, and Craig’s stomach did flips while he thought about the simple but beautiful fact that he was driving home. Their hands met above the center console of his car. Craig twisted the steering wheel left, comforted that in time such a motion would become wonderfully second-nature.

Craig took pictures of Tweek turning the apartment key, and they ate pints of ice cream on their bare kitchen floor.


End file.
